Journal 3 - Niko Traylor

After reading Heidi Estrem's “Writing is a Knowledge-Making Activity,” Andra Lunsford's “Writing Addresses, Invokes, and/or Creates Audiences” & Anzaldua's “How to Tame a Wild Tongue,” write in response to the following prompt.

How do you define "audience" and "knowledge," and how are these concepts important for writers? How do Lunsford and Estrem define these two terms, and what connections do they make between these terms and writing? 

I define audience as the group of people that find an authors piece intriguing. The author may write for a specific audience or write a piece and attract a certain audience. I define knowledge as the general information the author knows about whatever they are writing about. If it useful for an author to have background knowledge on a topic they intend to write about. Lunsford defines audience as a group of people that share the same interest as the author, which I agree. On the other hand, Estrem defines knowledge as the new information gained while writing a text, opposite of what I believe. Estrem's point of view is easy to understand because knowledge on a subject is unlimited so you can have prior knowledge and gain more. These two are connected because if an author has knowledge on a topic, he/she could craft a piece to successfully convey his/hers emotions to the audience.

What do these definitions of knowledge and audience help you to understand about Anzaldua’s text? What does Anzaldua's text contribute to your understanding of audience and knowledge that you hadn’t considered before?

To begin with, Anzaldua is from the Hispanic heritage so she contains useful prior knowledge before constructing her text. Then, Anzaldua connects to her audience, the Hispanic community, through her tone and style throughout the text. Understanding what knowledge and audience means to writing helped me see how successful Anzaldua was at crafting her text. Her text makes me consider how much an author thinks about their audience and how they can connect their knowledge they have to their audience in a convenient way, writing did not seem that complicated to me before.

Finally, after reading these three texts, have your definitions of audience and knowledge changed? if so, how? if not, why not? Be prepared to discuss your answers in class and to draw our attention to passages from the texts that support what you’re saying, that confuse you, that are illuminating for you, etc.

My definition of audience has remained the same, but my definition for knowledge has altered slightly. Estrem's definition of audience made me realize that knowledge is not just past known information, you are always gaining knowledge. The amazing thing about writing and knowledge is that your knowledge on a subject is unlimited, there is always more to learn and more to write about.